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[Wag the dog parenting] - Or, why Buckyballs are not a snack food.
Donnicton
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I normally try to take a pretty passive stance on big issues, because much of the time it takes more effort to get involved with them than it's actually worth.
But if there's one thing I absolutely hate, it's wag the dog parenting - where some parent's kid goes and does something so monumentally stupid, that the parent tries to safe face by running around declaring war on everything in existence in order to displace the blame from them.
This is why I am particularly annoyed that the parent of some paste eater has helped push the Consumer Product Safety Commission into suing the maker of Buckyballs and Buckycubes desk toys out of business because her kid decided to raid a container of Buckyballs and started popping them down like they were Skittles.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/25/health/cpsc-sues-magnet-maker/index.html
The first line of defense would have been to keep them out of reach of the kid to begin with...and teach your kid that Buckyballs are not gobstoppers.
I have seen these items too, they are plastered with warning labels - and it's not like it isn't clearly obvious that it's composed of quite literally nothing but small, swallowable parts. I'm sure many of you have seen a Newton's Cradle for example, this class of item has absolutely no place near a small child. In fact, the entire reason they have those warning labels to begin with are because of parents like this.
Now, I understand of course that sometimes all it takes is for the parent to turn away for less than thirty seconds, and kids tend to do some really stupid things(I once opened a pressure cooker while it was cooking, and ended up with some nice burns on my feet to show for it - and a tanned hide afterwards.), and I also understand that there are situations where a toy company really will make something that's a blatant example of child endangerment. Anyone remember those Cabbage Patch kids that pulled the hair off of childrens' scalps because it would drag anything that was even slightly more solid than Carbon Monoxide into its gaping maw? But what crosses the realm into grossly irresponsible in my opinion is when a parent tries to absolve themselves by running around on a "for the children" moral crusade on anything that they think they can place the blame on that isn't them over a product that the child should never have had access to to begin with.
But if there's one thing I absolutely hate, it's wag the dog parenting - where some parent's kid goes and does something so monumentally stupid, that the parent tries to safe face by running around declaring war on everything in existence in order to displace the blame from them.
This is why I am particularly annoyed that the parent of some paste eater has helped push the Consumer Product Safety Commission into suing the maker of Buckyballs and Buckycubes desk toys out of business because her kid decided to raid a container of Buckyballs and started popping them down like they were Skittles.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/25/health/cpsc-sues-magnet-maker/index.html
The Consumer Product Safety Commission is suing the maker of popular high-powered magnet "desk toys" to get them to stop selling their products, an agency spokesman said Wednesday.
The magnets can pierce holes in the intestines, and some children have needed multiple surgeries and lengthy hospitalizations. Since 2009, there have been at least a dozen ingestions of the magnets in Buckyballs toys.
Powerful magnets in toys raise risks from swallowing
The commission asked the makers of Buckyballs and Buckycubes to stop selling their products, but they refused, according Scott Wolfson, a spokesman for the federal agency.
"We're doing this to keep children safe," Wolfson said. "We want to prevent future surgeries."
A spokesman for Maxfield & Oberton, the maker of Buckyballs and Buckycubes, said the company "will fight this vigorously."
"There are half a billion magnets out there, and unfortunately there are some people who have misused the product," said Andrew Frank. "We market these products to adults age 14 and above, and there are warning labels on the product."
There are warning labels to keep the magnets away from children on five places on each box, and in accompanying instructions. A public awareness campaign about magnet safety with videos distributed by the government and a special website (www.magnetsafety.com) was launched several months ago, with the full cooperation of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the company said.
The company's website also has warnings posted next to the images of the products.
"Obviously the bureaucrats see danger everywhere, and those responsible people -- like our company who have vigorously promoted safety and appropriate use of our products -- gets put out of business by an unfair and arbitrary process," said Craig Zucker, founder and CEO of Maxfield and Oberton. "I don't understand how and why they did this without following their own rules before allowing us to make our case. It almost seems like they simply wanted to put our products and industry out of business."
Since 2008, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has received 200 reports of ingestion of magnets of all kinds, Wolfson said. The analysis released Wednesday showed more than 20 ingestions were of high-powered, "rare earth" magnets.
"We have worked with the company over the years," Wolfson said. "We did a recall with them in 2010. Yet the injuries still happened. In 2011 we worked with them on the education of consumers. Incidents still happened. So we've reached a point where we really do need to take stronger action, which we're doing. We're filing a lawsuit."
Several retailers, including Amazon and Brookstone, have agreed to stop selling the magnets.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission rarely files such administrative complaints -- the last time it did was 11 years ago against the maker of BB guns, Wolfson said.
"So many parents don't know about this hazard," Wolfson said. "They buy the products for themselves. Maybe their child gets access to it. Maybe they give it to their child.
"And the parents just need to know that two or more magnets are swallowed by a child, even a teenager -- we've had incidents with both young children and teenagers -- it can get caught in the small intestine, form an infection and then emergency surgery is needed. We want to avoid that."
Wolfson added that the agency is continuing to look at the safety of other brands of small, high-powered "rare earth" magnets.
Meaghin Jordan, whose son swallowed high-powered magnets, said she was "relieved" to hear about the complaint. When he was almost 2 years old, her son Braylon swallowed eight magnets and spent two months in the hospital, most of that time in intensive care.
"This is wonderful," she said. "I'm very glad they're taking action. If they can't sell them, then no one else can get hurt."
The first line of defense would have been to keep them out of reach of the kid to begin with...and teach your kid that Buckyballs are not gobstoppers.
I have seen these items too, they are plastered with warning labels - and it's not like it isn't clearly obvious that it's composed of quite literally nothing but small, swallowable parts. I'm sure many of you have seen a Newton's Cradle for example, this class of item has absolutely no place near a small child. In fact, the entire reason they have those warning labels to begin with are because of parents like this.
Now, I understand of course that sometimes all it takes is for the parent to turn away for less than thirty seconds, and kids tend to do some really stupid things(I once opened a pressure cooker while it was cooking, and ended up with some nice burns on my feet to show for it - and a tanned hide afterwards.), and I also understand that there are situations where a toy company really will make something that's a blatant example of child endangerment. Anyone remember those Cabbage Patch kids that pulled the hair off of childrens' scalps because it would drag anything that was even slightly more solid than Carbon Monoxide into its gaping maw? But what crosses the realm into grossly irresponsible in my opinion is when a parent tries to absolve themselves by running around on a "for the children" moral crusade on anything that they think they can place the blame on that isn't them over a product that the child should never have had access to to begin with.
Donnicton on
+1
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On the other hand: doesn't this show you that if you (in a rush to protect THE CHILDREN) put warning labels on EVERYTHING that just means de facto there's no warning labels on anything anymore, as noone takes them seriously? Which, again, leads to either making everyone child-safe because, apparently, the working hypothesis seems to be that the "average home" does not contain a single resident smarter than the average 2-year old.
I remember when I was younger and had been chewing on a glow stick.
And after a while, my mouth started to burn.
That had to have been at least 20 years ago though.
But to this day I'm worried those chemicals are gonna give me cancer or something.
The moral of this story is: outlaw glow sticks.
Also fun: Parents who don't tell their kids to shut the fuck up, and get really angry when someone else has to step in and tell their kids to shut the fuck up.
That said: Kids happen and unfortunately sometimes bad things happen and/or kids do stupid shit. Lord knows I did.
But there's a middle ground between "Ban it!" and "Oh holy shit, I'm a shitty parent". Things happen to kids that are bad. Sometimes because they do something dumb and sometimes for reasons beyond anyone's control. That doesn't mean
...
Ok I had a point here that I was meandering towards (or attempting to) but someone should probably just post a Simpsons "Won't someone think of the CHILDREN!?" clip instead as it'll be more coherent.
You got a kid, nice, now take responsibility and minimize the risk of your baby choking on X.
I still never tried to eat a fucking magnet.
there's a difference between confusing labeling on product and dangerous force of the universe clearly labled as such
They look like ball bearings. Exactly like ball bearings.
Also holy shit, that woman named her kid Braylon. Someone needs to feed that idiot magnets.
Not candy.
Candy!
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http://zenmagnets.com/
This took place almost fifteen years ago. I was, I’d like to say, eleven? I had started the sixth grade, I know that much, because when you entered Middle School, that’s when it became appropriate to take naps when you got home. Fifth graders don’t need to nap, because Elementary school was name Elementary school and not ‘Mentally Distressing School’ for a reason. When I’d get home from the fifth grade, I’d count out five jelly beans, which was my allocated snack, and then run eighty miles.
When I hit the sixth grade, though? There was so much walking between classes. And it was torturous! The sixth grade lockers were on the opposite side of the school from all the goddamn sixth grade classrooms, and backpacks were frowned upon in such a way that if you were wearing one, you got detention. To my understanding, this was to cut down on weapons in the school, and by mere virtue of being in a backpack, any object transmogrified into a weapon. Books? Weapon. Paper? Weapon. Gun? Weapon. So we had to carry all of our heavy ass books. Sure, they were scared of guns in our backpacks, but what about the guns that were also our arms?
Anyway.
I was home after school one day, laying down on the sofa to take a nap, facing the cushions, with my arms snaking their way between said cushions, feeling all the crap that my brother and I stealthily hid away because we were too goddamn lazy to go to the trashcan, and because between the cushions was the next best thing. String cheese wrappers, candy wrappers, dead batteries – and then there was the assortment of items that fell from pockets. Like, spare change.
My hand happened to move across a penny.
As my fingers traced the ridges, an interesting thought occurred to me.
“Why don’t I try putting this up my nose?”
I had the best position to get away with this silliness – I was facing away from everyone else, everyone else thought I was asleep. There I’d be, with a penny, in my nose; my secret. No one could take this from me.
So, I very gingerly placed it in my nostril, and gave it a polite shove. It fit, snugly, nicely, and I was contented. Then, I pushed it a little further, keeping a firm grip on the coin with my pointer finger and thumb.
That’s when my sinus cavity decided to get fresh with me.
See, I could feel my grip on the penny loosening. What I did not realize was that my body was literally pulling it away. Try as I might, my fingers kept slipping, slipping, slipping, until they were slipped, and then my nose consumed the penny in totality, shifting it somewhere to the region right below my right eye.
Fuck, I thought.
I mean, there are certain times in your life when you know you’ve screwed up pretty well. Having the tissue behind your face eat a penny because you were dumb enough to put a penny up there in the first place is one of those situations.
Now, in my defense, I had no way of knowing that my sinus cavity would be a greedy little shit. Not that it’s much of an excuse. I was still eleven goddamn years old and I somehow had thought it’d be a neat idea to shove a penny in my nose.
It was… close to five when I was lying down. 5:05 when my Total Recall moment occurred. 5:06 when my face decided to become the First National Bank of Michael’s Sinus Cavity. And dinner, at 5:15.
I was paralyzed with fear for those nine minutes, on a bizarre thought train:
Oh my God there’s a penny in my nose oh my God they’re going to have to take me to the emergency room and they’re going to have to take my face off, and I’m going to have to tell my parents that I shoved a penny up my nose oh my shit oh my lord, oh lord oh shit they’re going to be so mad, and the ER doctor is going to think I’m the biggest idiot on the planet and it’s because I am, because I did this stupid, awful thing.
It was the perfect combination of embarassment, stupidity, and pain.
Because that thing hurt like a motherfucker. Every single time I would shift, or move, I could feel the penny shift, and move. And every time it did that, it sent wave after wave of pain down my face. I could taste the copper.
The dinner bell rang and I dragged myself, flushed faced and bleary eyed to the table. I sat down, slowly chewing and swallowing my food, feeling the penny clicking about, still under my right eye, as my family droned on in the background.
Oh God oh God this dinner is going to be so bad because any second now, any second now you’re going to have to tell them what a goddamn po-faced idiot you are, you goddamn idiot, I can’t believe this –
And that’s when I felt it shift again. This time was unlike any of the others; it wasn’t merely moving back and forth, no no! Abe was migrating. From my right sinus cavity to my left. It moved down a track, and I swear you could see it move under my skin.
Dude you have to Oh God you have to tell them, you have to tell them now, this is going to your brain, to your goddamn brain, and then you’ll be dead of Penny Brain
Then, the penny decided it had had enough of the inside of my face, and wanted to leave. This time, through my left nostril.
That ridged, hard piece of copper started the long descent, and when it entered the top of my nose, it was the worst pain I had ever experienced. I have never felt physical pain as bad since, and this includes the time I stuck my finger in a light socket because why not, that looks fun.
Blinding white hot flashes every centimeter it moved. I gripped the tablecloth and screamed at the top of my lungs, teeth gnashing, tears flying from my eyes, the veins on my neck standing out so far you could see them from space. I only took breath in so I could sent it out again in an agonizing wave of sound.
It felt like this went on for, I dunno, like, thirty years, but it was really more like ten seconds. And then, with a tink! it fell from my left nostril, onto my plate, rolling around for a bit before landing Lincoln side up.
I stared down at the penny, this physical manifestation of great shame, and blinked. That little, tiny piece of metal caused all that pain.
And then I looked up, to see my family staring at me, forks midair, mouths agape.
My breath came is bursts and gasps as my skin finally returned to a semi-normal color. I released my grip on the tablecloth and stared back at them.
My dad finally broke the silence:
“How the fuck did you do that?”
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
Really?
I want to punch this moron
Mal, that was a wonderful story. I was going to post a similar story (except replace 'penny' with 'clear sequin from a dress' and 'nostril' with 'eyeball', and it would play out the same way.) Thankfully, no damage was done, and my parents never found out. It's amazing how much pain a child is able to go through in order to avoid getting in trouble with their parents.
WoW
Dear Satan.....
Man, no kidding. My brother jumped off a swing and broke his arm one time after being explicitly told not to jump off swings (as he would break a limb) that he went for two days without telling anyone.
Your story sounds more hurty. Anything involving eyes sounds more hurty.
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
punching, fortunately, has already been banned!
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/05/laundry-detergent-pods-poisoning-children/
Do parents really have to be told to NOT LET THEIR KIDS EAT DETERGENT? I mean, seriously, "herpderp my kid ate your colorful poison because I'm too much of a stupid* to teach my kid not to eat colorful poison! You and your company are solely responsible for my kid being dumb enough to eat your colorful poison. For that, you owe me 10 billion dollars."
*yes this was intended to be grammatically incorrect.
It's gotten to the point where if someone told me that the average parent was having kids entirely based on the idea that their kids could be crawling/walking lottery tickets they could cash in on if they leave something dangerous out for their kids to eat, I wouldn't instantly think that person was crazy.
HAHAHAHAHAHA
Stupid teenagers
This is basically attacking an edge case because people don't really get how dangerous magnets actually are. A case suing for the ban on kitchen knives would be laughed out of court if an unsupervised kid got their hands on one.
Never mind any parent or hell person older than 7 knows to keep literally everything that could conceivably fit in a mouth away from toddlers.
Hell I have a 3 inch scar above my right eye from a pillow fight, broke my pinkey on my right hand so it's not straight nor can I bring it close to my ring finger when I hold my fingers together
They said "more than 12" and its way way more than that. As in my wife (a pediatric nurse on a post-op floor) has cared for about that many kids who have required surgery for this (small rare earth magnets generally, I don't know the brand). Its really not that uncommon and its the kind of thing that's fatal if untreated, fairly difficult and expensive to correctly diagnose and very expensive (surgery on the intestines is not easy) to treat. Because of HIPAA and decentralized medical records, its hard to count these kind of cases, but from 2003-2005 the CDC found 21 cases (20 surgeries, 1 fatality) involving children swallowing magnets.
The actual report has been overloaded but this also makes their "its only for adults!" defense kind of weak
While I'm sympathetic to the idea that parents can want to over-childproof everything and don't want to take responsibility, I don't necessarily see the problem here. If these toys are creating a substantial hazard for children, there seems to be a pretty obvious net positive to have them not be sold. Its not like "don't swallow these vaguely candy looking objects into your mouth" is clearly more obvious than "don't eat these lead paint chips."
This is actually a pretty strong argument for the regulation. I know I swallowed a dime when I was like 7 and while I got x-rays to make sure it didn't go in my lungs even that is being cautious. 99% of the time if a kid swallows a small object there is no cause for alarm. If a kid swallows a rare earth magnet, there's a good chance they're going to get a perforated intestine and require six to seven figures US$ in medical costs to survive.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
People who took that attitude died out through natural selection?
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
1. The belief that we can essentially legislate away anything dangerous.
2. Parents who don't understand the concept of taking personal responsibility
And then you find out that they get even the inconveivable stuff in oh god no surely that must hurt
Basically my plan for child care is
(1) Stun, tranquilise or otherwise render them temporarily immobile
(2) Place upfright in a large container not quite as high as their mouth
(3) Pour in warm aspic
(4) Allow to set.
Raisins should be banned because I stuck one up my nose and had to go to the ER.
lmao, aspic.
Raisin Bran is a death trap. It's like a big purple Roach Motel for children.
It's all fun and games until 3 joints give out at once
And don't kid yourself, lead paint was banned for a multitude of reasons, like "if you use sand paper, it could melt your brain." not just to stop kids from eating chips.
Years later, recalling the incident, I was traumatized a second time wondering why my grandparents had handcuffs in their closet.
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LMAO, at least they were fuzzy pink zebra print right?
There are at least two other issues here:
1) The concept that parents are omnipotent and omniscient, and thus must shoulder the full burden of responsibility for anything their child does since they obviously should have been able to stop that child 100% of the time.
2) Issue #1 means that companies who release products that pose a known and serious health risk to young children can avoid any and all responsibility for those products.
Yeah the problem here is that even if the company puts on a warning people don't seem to realize how dangerous magnets are. They look pretty harmless and hell I've swallowed larger marbles as a kid with no harm so you don't tend to think about what might happen if these magnets are in your intestine and decide to be magnetic with each other paying no mind to whether or not they're in the same part of your intestines.
Maybe the burden should be on the company that's selling dangerous magnets in the form of shiny, round, easily swallowed balls to take more of an effort to get the danger of ingestion across.
Or maybe the dangers of ingesting those magnets are severe enough that just maybe shiny, round, easily swallowed powerfully magnetic balls shouldn't be sold as wacky novelty items, even if they're only "marketed" to adults.
Nope, the actual metal kind.
Also on Steam and PSN: twobadcats